36 Chapter 36- Natural Camouflage

Setting out into the marshlands, Dubs breathed a sigh of relief.

"It seems like that woman is quite paranoid. I will have to keep tabs on her, but I don't think she will pose a threat to me.", he thought.

Alt, who was walking alongside Dubs with shadowy streaks of energy radiating outwards, responded.

"Haha! But you admitted that she was pretty cute when she was frustrated like that."

Dubs remained silent and continued walking onward through the wetlands.

The ground squished as Dubs walked, and it required a fair amount of effort to take each step. "Alt, do you have any sort of mapping ability?", Dubs asked.

"As of right now, I don't. I would need to have more control over earth magic so that I could propagate a sonar like reading that graphs the location and altitude of the earth particles over a large area.", Alt replied.

"And I would need to learn the [Cartography] spell, of course."

Dubs was disappointed but looked around. "I suppose for now I will head to the north and explore the area around there. The purpose of my current expedition is to gather any materials that might be useful for experimentation, so there isn't really a particular location I am interested in."

Dubs and Alt headed north and slowly the wet sludge that they trudged their way through became more solid, until they had reached a dry plain. The crooked trees that covered the swamps also disappeared, and Dubs took a look at the sun.

The color of the sky turned from a greenish tint to a bright orange, as the blazing star beamed down with a dry heat, now that they were out of the swamp, and Dubs began to analyze the movement.

"It appears that over the course of an hour that the sun has moved 10 degrees in the sky... this would mean that the period of revolution of the planet is 36 hours- which doesn't line up with the underground sense of time. I will continue to further investigate the natural occurrences on the surface of the world. ", Dubs thought.

Making this observation, he moved on.

Dubs walked through the soft grass and began to inspect and harvest some of the plants he found as he was walking.

"I can determine the properties of these plants later if I gather enough of them, and analyze their uses."

He picked some Violet flowers that had 3 petals and yellow tongues sticking out of the center, and stored them in the void that Alt could use.

He also took a few handfuls of the grass and stored them, just in case.

"It doesn't seem as if there are too many useful materials within this plain. Alt, could you fly up to check if there are any landmarks in the area?", Dubs asked.

"Roger that!", Alt relayed as he began to fly up and took a look around.

"There is a river just past the hillside up ahead! We might be able to find something useful!", Alt shouted down to Dubs.

Dubs pressed onward over to the raised plain and when he came to the top he saw a stream of crystal clear water flowing through the valley.

"Perhaps there are some riverbed plants that would be useful... I am going to take a look.", Dubs stated as he slid down the hill.

Stopping himself from sliding as he came close to the river, Dubs began to search the surrounding area and found some seaweed like plants under the shallow surface of the water. Dubs waded into the water, and the cold stream began to repel itself from Dubs feet, creating air bubbles surrounding them.

"This reminds me of when my head was shoved into that irradiated water for minutes at a time. If I hadn't developed a resistance to the radiation, creating an air pocket, I most likely would have drowned."

Dubs began to rant madly. "I can't believe they would do such a thing to a fellow innocent human... I will make them pay... I will lock them up in chambers far worse than what they put me through..."

A light-bulb flashed inside Dubs head and he began to snicker at his ideas. "Ehehe... I will first create a regenerative medicine... and then I will have them be tortured... ripped and torn apart from the inside out... only to regenerate their lost flesh so that the process may be repeated..."

Dubs went back to normal, and began to think again. "Did I just say something, Alt? I feel like I was ranting about something but I cant seem to recall what..."

Alt simply snickered and brushed off the topic. "It will be interesting to watch and find out whether the insanity or the sanity in you wins out..."

Dubs gave him an odd stare but then continued to gather the plants. "Ah, yes! I believe I decided just now to try to find some sort of herb with medicinal properties..."

Alt began to laugh hysterically, but this only further confused Dubs.

After gathering a reasonable amount of the seaweed, Dubs decided to venture a little further into the river to gather some of the coral that laid on the floor of the river.

The pink branchlike coral had the texture of sandpaper, and Dubs slowly waded deeper and deeper in order to reach it.

After his body had been submerged, an air bubble surrounded Dubs allowing him to breathe underwater. He stroked his way towards the coral reef and began to break off pieces of the coral one by one.

Alt sucked the coral pieces up into his void storage, and Dubs came to a realization.

"Wait a minute..."

"If the water here is being repelled by my body... wouldn't that mean that there is magical radiation present in the water?"

The ground below the coral reef suddenly began to shake, and the entire reef emerged upwards.

What Dubs had thought was a coral reef, suddenly showed itself as a predatory sea creature.

The creature was flat like a pancake, and its skin was smooth, appearing to look like a sandstone. Its black beading eyes were on the lower half of the pancake, and below the eyes was a jagged mouth. Its jaws were as sharp as blades, and the creature clearly was angry at Dubs for extracting the coral from its back.

"ahh... what a pain..." Dubs exclaimed, as he whipped out his dagger. "This could be a problem, as my mobility is limited here in the water... I wish to kill this creature to run some experiments on its material though..."

Dubs began to grin with insanity and started forming a sphere of darkness in his hand. "I didn't want to have to use mana on this trip so early, but it looks like I have no choice..."

The creature flapped itself like a bed-sheet as it began to charge at Dubs. Dubs noticed a blue aura surrounding the creature light up as it was charging, and it seemingly increased in speed.

"Can this creature use magic enhancements!? It had clearly been irradiated by the water."

Dubs released the sphere of dark energy, which fired at the face of the creature. Burying in between the creatures eyes, the spinning ball of energy ripped the flesh of the creature apart, and Dubs slowly moved the ball inwards so that it would reach the brain of the creature.

Trails of blood traced the water where the ball had hit the creature, and bits of its brain began to fly out into the water as Dubs manipulated the ball of energy further into the skull of the creature. After a moment, it had stopped moving, and Dubs had Alt collect its body into the void.

Emerging from the surface of the water, Alt turned to Dubs and asked him "Why didn't you just leave that one to me? Surely you didn't have to waste mana on a creature like that. You used 10 of your 70 mana points, leaving you with 60."

Dubs gave a creepy smile. "I felt like being the one to take its life... and I need the practice anyways..."

Alt shrugged. "Have it your way."

"Anyways, since my storage takes advantage of a void, the materials inside are essentially inside a vacuum. There is no need to worry about a spoiling carcass or anything."

Dubs face began to twist around unnaturally, and the veins in his eyes popped out once more.

"Very good, very good. Let us continue north... I am beginning to feel the presence of people up there..."

Alt looked at Dubs confused. "What!? How could you sense people? There is too much radiation up north for me to be able to sense any lifeforms..."

"I can see their forms... they are hunched over... mining... most likely dwarves... being whipped by men in armor... a slave camp...", Dubs ranted.

"Dubs, I think you need to calm down and think rationally. You might be hallucinating and confusing it with reality." Alt responded.

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"We will head north..." Dubs droned.

Dubs face went back to normal, and remembering what had happened, Dubs face appeared slightly shocked.

"I... what was that!? It was some sort of vision... like someone was broadcasting something into my mind... I can't remember much... its all too hazy, but at any rate, we have to head north. There are most likely some terrible atrocities happening over there!", Dubs shouted.

"Alright, will do. Lets get to the bottom of this.", Alt stated as the two swam across the river and headed north.